


Guardian Angel

by Bookworm1986



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:08:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29287329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookworm1986/pseuds/Bookworm1986
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 4





	Guardian Angel

Sam left him at the bar that evening and went back to the hotel room, Dean stayed behind for one last drink at the bar. 

The pie festival was quietening down. He’s swilling the whiskey around in the glass in front of him slowly, lost in thought. He feels someone sit down in the seat next to him, hears a low voice order a drink. The same as his. 

He turns slowly, raising his glass ‘Good choice.’ 

A tight smile and a slight nod of her head with a tilt of her glass back. They both resume contemplation of their drinks. 

Dean finds himself looking at his companion in the mirror behind the bar. She’s perhaps a little older than him, shoulder length dark hair, glasses, suit dress. Odd look for a pie festival. He mentions it to her.

His comment is met by a long stare. ‘Do you often comment on strangers’ wardrobe choices?’

He raises his hands, backs off back to his drink. 

‘I’ve been told I’m not that good at relaxing. I’m trying to start. I’ve been told this whiskey will help. 

I’m sorry if I was rude.’

Dean flashes a smile in her direction. ‘Apology accepted.’

The tension in her seems to lessen.

He turns properly in his chair. ‘So, are you working here? Or is this your casual attire.’

She seems to choose her words carefully. ‘I came here on an errand. This’ she gestures to herself, ‘was just what was available. I had been away for a while.’

‘How about you? You don’t look like one of the competitive pie eating team.’ She seemed entirely serious, was she actually asking that question?

‘Not competitively, no, but I do love pie. Far superior to cake.

My brother and I were passing by. We had to stop.’

‘Too much pie for him?’ She asked, looking at the empty seat the other side of him.

Dean snorted, ‘Ha, that will be the day! No, I suspect he’s gone to call his girlfriend.’

‘You haven’t gone to call yours?’ Was she flirting with him?

‘I haven’t had a girlfriend in a long time.’ Dean looked down at his glass, ‘not sure love is for me. It never works out well.’

He sees a warm smile touch her lips, a hand on his arm, ‘You don’t think you deserve to be loved.’ A statement not a question. A long stare.

Her hand touches his arm, ‘Everyone deserves to be loved.’ Electricity flashes through him. 

Dean looks at her again. She’s hot. Usually he would be all over this. He could have her if he wanted. If he wanted ...

He gives her a small smile, ‘Yeah well, not so lucky over here. I’m fairly sure the right person has been and gone, and I was too stupid to realise.’ A look Dean couldn’t read flashed across her face. 

‘I think I’m going to call it a night.’ He downs the rest of his drink and leaves money on the bar. He can feel that long stare again, it’s giving him goosebumps.

‘Thank you for listening to my woes. Sorry I can’t stick around. Have a good evening.’ He stands up off the bar stool.

‘Goodbye Dean’, she smiles softly.

With a little wave, he turns and heads to the car park. He’s opened his car and sat in the driver’s seat, key hovering over the ignition. 

What’s wrong with him? She seemed nice, she was easy on the eye. Like she said, he deserved it. He sat thinking about her touch on his arm. It lingered. It felt comforting, familiar. 

Something was niggling at him. Her touch, the shivers it sent up his spine. What was it?

Not his arm, his shoulder. Goodbye Dean. 

He shot out of the car and ran back into the bar. She was still sat where he had left her. She turned as Dean came in the door, as thought she knew he was coming.

‘Cas...’ he breathed.

‘How did you guess?’

‘Goodbye Dean. And my shoulder.’

Cas let out a little smile. 

‘Why do you look like this?’

‘It’s a dream Dean. I didn’t want to come to you as me, to disrupt your life. I wanted to blend in so you wouldn’t notice me, so I could check on you.

You saw her yesterday at the bar. Your evening started out the same. But you didn’t talk to the real version, probably didn’t even notice her.’

‘So what, you were going to turn this into some sort of kinky dream? Just great!’ Dean throws his hands up. ‘That’s hardly what I need right now. What are you here for? Why haven’t you come back?’

‘Dean, I’m not coming back. I’m sorry. There are things Jack needs me for.

But I’m still watching over you. And you need to remember what’s happened. 

You aren’t in bed dreaming. You’re unconscious. You’ve lost a lot of blood. 

You’ve got a choice to make. I want you to choose to live.’

‘You’re in heaven? So I will see you again, if I die?’ 

‘You will Dean. But please, not today. You are worth more than this. After everything you’ve done, all you’ve given. You deserve more from life than a death like this.’

‘I can’t remember, Cas.’

The intense stare was back, the one he knew so well, even though it was coming through brown eyes rather than the normal blue.

‘What can’t you remember? What happened?’

‘No, I don’t want to remember.’ Dean looked down, embarrassed, he couldn’t say it. He wanted to, he didn’t know how. He frowned and looked up, ‘Have you any idea what my life is like? I don’t want to go back to that. There’s nothing left for me.’

‘Dean, please you deserve a long and happy life.’

‘I don’t want a long and happy life.’ He left the end of the sentence unsaid. Hoping Cas would understand.

He looked at Cas, somehow seeing the real Cas, despite the woman before him. I miss you, he thought, did he say that out loud? 

She started to falter, to flicker, everything turned hazy. Cas started to shout his name over and over again. Then everything went black.

He woke up in a hospital room. Sam slumped in a chair next to him, asleep. Machines beeping all around him. 

He tried to speak. Found a tube in his throat stopping him. He tried to move. He couldn’t. The machines started beeping wildly. Sam jumped up, doctors and nurses flooded the room.

‘Dean stay still, please stop trying to move.’ He looked around frantically at them. 

The doctor closest to him seemed happy with the machine readings. ‘We’re going take this tube out now Dean. Just stay calm.’

When he was free of the tube and his bed had been raised slightly so he wasn’t laying flat any longer, Dean croaked to Sam, ‘where am I? What happened?’

Sam filled him in on the vampire-mimes, on the nearly fatal back injury.

‘I thought we lost you. In the ambulance. It was odd, you said ‘Goodbye Dean’. If I hadn’t seen it come from your mouth I would have sworn it was Cas.’ Sam shook his head. ‘You were gone. For a long time.’

Sam looked up at his brother, a question in his eyes. Dean let out a resigned sigh.

‘I wanted to go. It was my time. He wouldn’t let me. 

Wanted me to live a long and happy life.’ Dean laughed bitterly. Sam raised his eyebrows.

‘He’s in heaven. He can’t come down here and he doesn’t want me there. So you know what, I’ll do just what he wants me to. He’ll wish he never said that to me. Stupid son of a bitch doesn’t want me, I’ll show him.’

After several more surgeries and some intensive physio, Dean was able to walk again. The doctors were impressed. Sam was sure it was spite pushing him on. 

He had a limp, he would never hunt. But he and Sam agreed it was time to retire anyway. Pass their knowledge to the next generation. 

They set the bunker up as command HQ. Travelled around to Hunter gatherings to share know how and tips. The famous Winchester brothers, everyone wanted to hear about the prize fights, the deaths, the deals, the demons, the angels. Dean never spoke about Cas. Soon word got round not to ask.

Sam and Eileen settled into a semblance of a normal life. She carried on with the odd hunt until she got pregnant. Sam and Dean seemed to have suddenly received a big pay out from a previously unheard of Winchester family trust, apparently lawyers had been trying to track them for years and had finally succeeded (not interfering, Jack, really?). They didn’t have to worry about money, legitimately, for the first time in their lives.

Sam and Eileen tried to encourage Dean to date for a while. He paid lip service to it a couple of times. Never even pecked any of the girls on the lips. His heart wasn’t in it. Sam tried to broach the topic, but always got shut down with ‘I’m just living my long and happy life how I want to Sam.’

Over time, Sam stopped asking, Dean stopped pretending. He wasn’t unhappy on his own, but he wasn’t happy either. As the years passed, the spite died down. He began to regret his choice to live as long as he could. He was lonely. He would never admit it.

It was a cold day. Ridiculous really. Dean slipped on a patch of ice in the yard. Doctors said it was inevitable, his spinal cord was so close to having been severed all those years before, it just took a sharp fall to give up the ghost. They were impressed he had lived as long as he had after the findings of his autopsy. The couldn’t understand how he had survived some of the injuries which marked his body. Nothing short of miraculous. He must have a guardian angel, they concluded. 

They had no idea. All the injuries they could see had been healed by Cas while he was alive. What they couldn’t were see all the reckless things Dean had tried to do as time wore on. He knew Cas was there, interfering, keeping him safe. He got more stupid, more obvious. It was the only way he could go on, the only way to get that feeling back, to fight the loneliness, to know that Cas still cared. 

As Dean lay there in the snow, hypothermia setting in, he thought back to his long life. He had seen his nephew be born and grow up, his great nephew had just arrived. It hadn’t been all bad after all. The spite was gone. He was ready now, as ready as he had been that day. He laughed to himself, perhaps Cas had a day off.

As Dean sat on the porch of the Roadhouse with Bobby sipping a beer, Bobby explaining how heaven worked now, he couldn’t help but be proud of Jack and Cas. He looked down at his legs and saw their youthful strength returned. He turned his body and felt no resistance. It had been years. 

He knows now that time moves differently here and it’s probably only been the blink of an eye. He gets that Cas was trying to make sure he experienced his family, kept Sam close, safe. He also knows that he was there his whole life, even when Dean couldn’t see him. 

He got up and went to look out at the hills overlooking the bar. Waiting.

It didn’t take long. ‘Hello Dean’. He was home.


End file.
